


Into Whitewood

by icarus_chained



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cities, Conflict, Cowboys & Cowgirls, Desert, Detectives, Fantasy, Female Protagonist, Gen, Gods, Investigations, Mages, Magic, Mystery, Religion, Spirits, Western
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 10:26:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Myna Albrecht, Investigating Magess, stalks into the town of Whitewood on the borders of the wastelands to investigate a potential malignancy. Her initial investigations do not necessarily go well.</p>
<p>Concept piece for an original fantasy western.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into Whitewood

The woman leaning languidly back against the boardwalk railing, her feet propped up on one of the only two other chairs in front of the hotel, was one of those that seemed to be made primarily of leather. Her skin, coffee-dark to start with, had been badly tanned by sun and wind over the years, leaving weathered and dark-splotched results. Her left eye, as clear and grey as the right, looked somehow more startling, shining out from the mess of sun-damage on that side of her face. 

Her clothes were hardly less battered. Leather and cotton, thick denim for the trousers. Most of it clean, but all of it worn. The boots were about the only exception, heavy and quality, made to last. Her arms, the forearms bared and lightly scarred beneath the rolled-back sleeves, were corded with lean muscle. A workman's hands. The gun on her hip wasn't the more dainty-looking city models, but something with enough stopping power to put down a bull. 

In short, she looked much as the barman had said: a woman rolled up straight out of the wastelands, in town on a stopover and not much more. The only incongruity was the deck of cards peeking cheerfully from the pocket of the leather waistcoat, a rather more personable item than the rest of her appearance suggested. If not for that, Myna would have had to question the barman's assertion of the woman's usefulness. Waste-wanderers on stopover generally were _not_ much use as fonts of gossip on the permanent inhabitants. Even if they were, apparently, semi-regular, blowing through on a schedule.

"Jennifer Holloway?" she asked, climbing the boardwalk steps crisply, twitching her riding skirts out of the way to sit down in the remaining chair. The woman glanced sideways at her, a half-smile twitching the corner of her mouth. Possibly at Myna's impertinence, sitting down without an invitation. Myna really couldn't care less. "You are Ms Holloway, yes?"

"... Jenny," the woman said, at last. Shifting in her seat so that she was at least partially facing Myna, that smile still etched into her leathered face. "Not Jennifer. _Definitely_ not 'Ms'. Alright?"

Myna raised an eyebrow, but shrugged. She was hardly going to quibble over the minutiae, was she? At least not when they weren't relevant. "As you wish," she agreed, shortly. Then bulled on to the pertinent parts of the conversation. "I was told you might have some local information I'm looking for?"

'Jenny' raised a dark eyebrow of her own, the smile flickering through to a more complete grin as she dropped her legs from the chair to sit forward. "Cityborn," she decided, running an amused and slightly patronising eye over Myna. "No patience whatsoever." She paused, thoughtfully, sucking absently at her teeth. "Hunting something? Or some _one_?"

Myna flashed a small smile, thin and mirthless. "Yes," she said, and didn't clarify further. Whether her target counted as a person or a thing depended wholly on what she encountered when she found them. "I was given to understand you might be able to help me."

And yes, that was not really a question, and no, she did not particularly care about the rudeness of it. This woman was widely agreed to be the best possible source for the information she needed, and with no other leads left, Myna was long past the point of playing games of will she, won't she. She, all possible shes, _would_ , or there would be hell to pay.

Jenny narrowed her eyes, shifting in her seat. The hip with the gun wasn't being readied, but from the woman's expression, Myna thought that was mostly because the gun wasn't the weapon she would go for, this close and from sitting. Hmm. Interesting. Useless, of course. But interesting.

"Depends," the wastewoman said, quietly. "Got a lot of information, yes. On many different sorts of things. Some of it ain't the kind to be passed on. So." She stared hard at Myna, that silver stare strangely hot, potent. Myna frowned faintly. "What kind are _you_ looking for?" A thin smile. " _Magess_."

... Ah. So. Information had spread. Well, in many ways, that rather simplified things. Myna dropped the veil on her power, not without some small relief, and straightened a little in her seat.

"I don't know what I'm looking for, yet," she explained, cool and unimpressed by the vague suspicion in the other woman's eyes. "There have been reports of strange activity out here, somewhere in this region. I was simply tasked to find out what, and whether it requires dealing with."

Jenny raised a startled eyebrow. "Sent?" she echoed, stressing the word in vague incredulity. "Up from the cities? What the hell kind of messing around was it, to get the cities all hot and bothered?"

Myna smiled briefly. "Well, that is rather the question," she murmured. "The main reason for alarm is that we do not _know_ what kind of activity it was." She shrugged irritably. "To the point where the priesthood of Athin have taken an interest as well, in case the disturbance is ... _spiritual_ , rather than magical." Her tone on the word 'spiritual' probably revealed a lot more of her opinions than was probably wise, but then Myna had never made bones of her mage's bias against those who drew power from spirits or other outside sources. Riding another's coattails had never seemed an admirable approach to power to her. 

Jenny, for her part, laughed shortly, leaning back in her chair. Not propping her feet back up, not just yet, but she seemed much amused by the thought regardless.

"Athin," she mused, rolling the god's name around her mouth. "Justice and law, isn't it? The Judge God who polices spirits?"

Myna snorted. "The god of sticking his nose into other people's business, yes." She shook her head. "And his priesthood much the same. Fair warning, you will probably receive an interview with _their_ investigator shortly too." A wry look. "If you haven't already, and aren't simply stringing me along?"

Jenny grinned. "Nah," she dismissed, waving a hand. "But I've seen the boy around. Can't miss a priest. Especially not one like that." Whether she meant the man's rather powerfully built figure, or his earnest, _nosy_ demeanour, Myna couldn't tell. Though she agreed. The man would never make for a subtle investigation. 

"Ych," she said, waving a hand to dismiss the subject, and the man. "Irrelevant. You may deal with him when he finally finds the brains to come asking for you. Right now, you need to deal with _me_ , if you please." She tilted her head, watching the loose readiness coiled through the other woman's languid seat. Defensive. Possibly unfond of mages. Or possibly just enjoying the chance to yank a cityborn around? But most definitely trying to run Myna around, and it was getting _tiresome_. "I would appreciate," she finished, quite softly, "if you could answer my question now. Information. Do you have any that might help?"

Jenny stayed silent, for a second. Not defiance, Myna thought, not really. More the time it took the wastewoman to come to a decision, rolling the thought around in her mind while she studied Myna with cool, grey eyes and that strangely potent expression. Silence not from perversity, but from consideration.

"Why'd they send you to me?" she asked at last. "You'll have come from Pullings down at the saloon, he's the main one to know me. Maybe Asherun at the smithy. But you'd have to have asked something pretty specific for them to think of me." She smiled, rather crookedly. "And been a mite forceful, to make them _say_ anything about it."

Myna smiled tightly. 'Forceful'. Yes. The smith, some six and a half feet tall, black as pitch and with no small talent himself, a metal-singer, hadn't deigned to point her _anywhere_ until she'd pulled her warrant-sign and made it clear that her authority to arrest or detain people did, in fact, extend beyond the cities. They hadn't sent her out here with her hands tied.

"I asked them who would be the first to know if anything strange happened in the area," she said, clipped and clear. "From my profession, I assume they knew what kind of strange I meant. Why they would then choose to send me to _you_ , your guess is as good as mine."

Because the woman in front of her was talentless. Not even veiled, Myna had a particular talent for veils and magics of disguise. It, along with her not inconsiderable talent in combat, was how she had earned her investigative post. Jenny had enough power to maybe scrape together a water-finding spell, and only enough of one for a few feet of distance at a time. Nothing potent enough for training, and without training, nothing that would enable her to notice a working unless it was happening literally right on top of her, or unless it had very visible effects.

No. If Jenny had more information on a possible mage problem than anyone else in town, it was either because she was tied into the other end of it, a priest of some kind, or it was because she had enough physical and personal knowledge of the land and the people around her to make educated guesses. And given that priests usually lit up the mage senses like sky flares, carrying their gods around like armour and shield, Myna thought it was most likely the latter.

But if that was the case ... why was the woman being so cagey?

"Hmm," Jenny murmured, her eyes sharp and thoughtful, winking in that dark splash of damage on her face. "The thing is, you see, that I don't hold with mages. At all." She flashed a leathery grin, but there was a tenseness under it, a lurking ring of truth. "I wouldn't even have sat down with you, dear, except that I've been getting the impression that it's better to tell you to piss off to your face than try to outrun you. You've been making an impression, shall we say."

Myna shrugged, grinning faintly to herself. Yes, well. That had been the _point_ , hadn't it? Better to give the impression that running was futile. It meant you had to do less of it.

"Which is why it's a little strange that they'd think I could tell you anything about maybe-mages, maybe-priests," Jenny continued, tipping herself thoughtfully back on her chair. "Since it's fairly well known that I avoid them like they was plagued. Why would they think I could _show_ you them?"

Myna pinched her nose, sighing faintly around her frustration. "Presumably," she said, tightly, "because they've realised that to avoid them, you would have to _recognise_ them?" She growled faintly. "Which means, given your reputation, that it can be assumed that you would know if one existed, and where, if only so you could avoid the area in future?"

And, she thought heatedly, since that is not exactly a difficult conclusion to reach, that means you're _still_ playing me around. Running verbally, instead of physically, and my dear, that annoys me equally as much. I do not _like_ having to run after people.

"Ms Holloway," she said, her voice less crisp now than icy. "I strongly suspect you are being deliberately awkward." She met the sudden flash of Jenny's tight grin with one of her own. "Now, you've given a reason why. You don't like my profession, or my nature. Fair enough. But while I am content to allow you a certain degree of rudeness because of that, I am _not_ prepared to allow you to compromise my investigation. So. If we could please step past the little games, and to the part where you tell me, conclusively, whether or not you have anything that might be of actual use to me?"

She did. Myna _knew_ she did. If the game had been simply to play around with the magess, to string the little cityborn along, there wouldn't have been half so much wariness on the other woman's part, nor half so much genuine evaluation. There was something underneath this bluster, some genuine knowledge of what was going on, and one way or another, Myna would have that knowledge from her.

It would be tidier, though, if that knowledge could be volunteered, rather than pried forth.

And perhaps Jenny knew that, or perhaps the woman had simply tired, suddenly and completely, of this interview. Myna might lay odds either way. But the wastewoman sat forward with a disgruntled sigh, and raised one finger commandingly.

"Alright," Jenny said. "Since it's a fair point, and since I've had enough fun for one evening." She pursed her lips thoughtfully, her eyes going suddenly distant. Consideration, but deeper this time, and with more ... apprehension, Myna thought. Worry, maybe. "It's not good, though. And probably not helpful, either. You need to know that in advance."

"Secondhand information rarely is," Myna agreed, waving a dismissive hand and sitting back in her own chair now that the useless pissing match was out of the way. "So far, I've found less than nothing, and this entire area is ... _tangled_ , to the mage senses. Too naturally confused to be of much use without a better idea of what's normal for it. I'll take whatever clarifying information I can get."

Jenny blinked at little, at that. "That was ... almost humble of you," the woman murmured, with a faint flicker of amusement. Myna lifted an eyebrow back.

"If you do not mess around with me, I can be surprisingly so," she responded, a little tartly. Jenny laughed, short and startled, amused.

"Fair enough then," the woman said, shaking her head. "Alright, fair enough." 

Then she sobered, tilted her head to look out over the railings, out towards the northern end of town. Out towards the deserts, heading up into the mountains. 

"It's not just you who finds it tangled," she said, at last. "Mage or priest, I think. Your Athinian colleague has been wandering around looking lost and worried too. There's something here. The land's shifting around it. Something malignant. But it's not _showing_. There's definitely something, enough to make people nervous, enough to skew the feel of the place and set people's nerves on edge. But whatever it is, it hasn't showed itself once, not in the four weeks I've been here."

She shook her head, turning back to Myna, the grey eyes concerned now, frowning in a worn face. "Could be a mage," she continued, shrugging in agitation. "Or a spirit. Hard to tell. Whatever it is, it's making things shy around the town. Animals, people. And the trails north. That's where the bulk of the infection is, I think. But there's nothing to tell you how to deal with it. Nothing to tell you what it _is_. You understand?"

Myna frowned, turning her ring around her finger while she mused. "The priest is agitated?" she asked, distantly. Not really of Jenny, more of the world at large. "There were rumours, you know. Back in guildhall. That this disturbance was ... something worse than a black mage."

"Oh?" Jenny asked, lightly, but there was a sudden tension in her, an order of magnitude above what had come before. Light and casual, but she was humming like a wire beneath it, and Myna found that ... curious. "What kind of rumours?"

Myna studied her thoughtfully. Making no attempt to disguise the fact. She studied the woman, opening every sense she had, keying herself up until nothing short of a divine cloak could hide the woman from her. Myna sharpened herself to bladepoint, because there was something _strange_ here.

"There were rumours that we hunted a spirit-eater," she said at last. Drinking in every last detail of the woman's reaction. "What is also called a false-mage. There were rumours that that was why the gods had taken an interest, and let the Guild send a mage as well as their own priest." She tilted her head, smiled a little narrowly, and without much mirth. "Do you think _that_ would answer for what you've felt?"

Jenny held still, the humming stillness of a rattler ready to strike. Her eyes were more silver than grey, and there was that strange sensation of _potency_ , yet again. Some sense of something, not magic but _something_ , in the weight of that gaze. Myna, watching her, felt the slow stirring of instinct in her gut. Not fear. Not anger. Simply ... awareness.

"We'll have no Eaters here," the wastewoman said, and there was an undercurrent there. Anger, Myna thought, something else. Fear? Caution? "Mages, priests, fine. The cities can come up and sort them out. But we won't take Eaters. Not once they're revealed. I'd promise you that."

And that was interesting, that was _personal_ , and there was a hum through Jenny like she thought there was something she could _do_ about it. Not to mention ... 'we', hmm, what did that mean? We, the townspeople? We, the land? Something else, something more. Jenny wasn't a priest, Myna would have sensed the god. She wasn't a mage, Myna would have known that too. But there was something, even still.

"I'll be sure to tell you, then," she murmured, watching the wastewoman thoughtfully. "When I find it, whatever it is. When I reveal it. I will ... be sure to inform you, shall I?"

Jenny smiled, crooked and curious in that weathered face. "Sure," she said, and it was more amused than anything, unconcerned. As though she thought Myna mildly naive for the suggestion. Because Jenny was the one who knew things, maybe? Because Jenny always knew first? "When you find something. Yes. You do that, dear."

It was a dismissal. Undisguised, the hardness still in the woman's eyes, over the faint perturbation. The suggestion of the Eater had done something, stirred something, and Jenny had no more use for Myna right now. A fact she didn't really attempt to hide.

Alright, Myna thought, as she rose silently to her feet, gifting the woman with a tight, glittering smile in parting. Alright. Fair enough.

There was more here than the recent disturbances, she thought, walking away with long, ground-eating strides, feeling the silver gaze on her back the whole way. Oh yes. There was more at work than whatever malignancy had crept in over the past few months. And Myna would lay good odds that that something more came up out of the wastes, and rolled through on a schedule.

And perhaps, she thought, as a solidly-built figure blazing with the internal fire of a god hove into view, a hundred yards on at the saloon ... perhaps she might have an idea who to ask about it. Priests of Athin were annoying, yes. But the servants of the god of busybodies were generally _very good_ at finding things out. Particularly about people.

She turned in place, casting her gaze back along the boardwalk to the hotel, and the figure still perched at the railings. Yes. Yes, she thought, perhaps that might be wise.

This town was a tangle, a twisted skein of influences on the boundary between civilised magics and the wild wastes, where stranger things than gods were rumoured to dwell. And Jenny Holloway, washed up out of them to beach upon the town as she chose, seemed to know more about those influences than a woman of her talent should suggest. When there was something here of sufficient potency to alarm mages and gods hundreds of miles distant ... Myna thought it would be more than wise to find out how, and why, the woman was so well informed. If the enemy was well enough versed in the local terrain to disguise itself, she must become equally well-versed, or she would deserve anything that might happen to her because of it.

Yes. She nodded to herself, a decisive snap of her head. The priest first, the god. An ally, should their prey - or their surroundings - prove to be more complicated than the guildhall had initially suspected. And then ... well. 

There was nothing she had yet met that could run from her forever. In that, at least, Myna Albrecht was confident. Even if Whitewood proved more complex than anticipated, there was nothing it could offer that she could not at the least hunt to the holding point.

She was, after all, the very best the Guild had to offer. And the very best the Guild had to offer was exactly what this town, this malignancy, and this Jenny, would have to beat.


End file.
